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Starcraft 2 Event Prize Distribution - January

Forum Index > SC2 General
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1 2 Next All
Thrie
Profile Joined May 2011
United States24 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-01-29 04:30:09
January 29 2012 01:19 GMT
#1
Event Prize Distribution
[image loading]



Small Events
[image loading]


What you see above is a presentation of data that has been collected and presented by the awesome Liquipedia volunteers. The charts show the distribution and trends in award money since launch. A gut check against the gold standard of SC2 prize winnings, sc2earnings.com shows that players with over $1,000 in winnings have combined for about 80% of all winnings. Seeing as premier events account for approximately 75% of all prize money, I feel pretty good about the data.

I think that the data show some interesting things for the Starcraft scene.

First is that prize money is still growing, if at a bit of an uneven pace.

Second is that there are seven organizations that are really providing a lot of the financial incentive for players. It is no coincidence in my view that GOM is awarding the most money and that most of the best players either live in Korea or try to go there to train.

The last bit of info that stuck in my mind was that small events account for almost 25% of all winnings. It takes a whole lot of dailies to award the same amount of money as even one season of the GSL.

Edit: Update to show NASL and ESL correctly in Organization chart.
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
TrickyGilligan
Profile Joined September 2010
United States641 Posts
January 29 2012 01:21 GMT
#2
Cool stuff, I hope this does something to reduce the amount of "esports bubble" and other such negative posts I've been seeing recently. It looks like stead growth to me, instead of something unsustainable.
"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it." -Groucho Marx
Muffinman53
Profile Joined November 2010
571 Posts
January 29 2012 01:28 GMT
#3
Thanks so much for putting all of this information in one place. This is awesome :D
Sabu113
Profile Blog Joined August 2009
United States11075 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-01-29 01:31:44
January 29 2012 01:30 GMT
#4
Very nice thank you. Once again as everyone has already stated, it's incredible how little MLG had to invest last year compared to what they got and their rivals.

edit: It would be interesting if we could add estimated invite cost to MLG. (but then IPL gets some +s too I believe)
Biomine is a drunken chick who is on industrial strength amphetamines and would just grab your dick and jerk it as hard and violently as she could while screaming 'OMG FUCK ME', because she saw it in a Sasha Grey video ...-Wombat_Ni
ChuCky.Ca
Profile Joined July 2011
Canada2497 Posts
January 29 2012 01:35 GMT
#5
thx so much for this very good look at prize money
Most Skilled Current esport Games Scbw>Sc2>Cs1.6>Dota2>Hon>Loopin Louie The Drinking Game>LoL
Angel_
Profile Blog Joined December 2011
United States1617 Posts
January 29 2012 01:46 GMT
#6
Oh there are graphs with colors and shit all up in this humpty dumpty.

Thank you for this information.

"It is no coincidence in my view that GOM is awarding the most money and that most of the best players either live in Korea or try to go there to train."

- I kind of disagree with this thought however. Certainly it's an incentive, and definitely also a benefit, but the best players are in Korea regardless of the money being there because the best players are the Koreans, simply because of everything about how they live and practice.

If the money weren't there, it would still be the case.
DarkPlasmaBall
Profile Blog Joined March 2010
United States45006 Posts
January 29 2012 01:49 GMT
#7
This is a fantastic compilation! Thanks so much for this

I'm sure we'll continue to see an increase in prize money over the next year, although I'm curious as to how MLG's new format may affect it.
"There is nothing more satisfying than looking at a crowd of people and helping them get what I love." ~Day[9] Daily #100
Thrie
Profile Joined May 2011
United States24 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-01-29 01:58:30
January 29 2012 01:54 GMT
#8
On January 29 2012 10:46 Angel_ wrote:

"It is no coincidence in my view that GOM is awarding the most money and that most of the best players either live in Korea or try to go there to train."

- I kind of disagree with this thought however. Certainly it's an incentive, and definitely also a benefit, but the best players are in Korea regardless of the money being there because the best players are the Koreans, simply because of everything about how they live and practice.

If the money weren't there, it would still be the case.


I think that GOM can award that kind of money because the people and players there are so in to the game (maybe just gaming in general). I think that you're right that the players didn't all decide to move there because of prize money, but that they were already there. I think that in this case at least, the money followed the interest!

Edit:Misquote!
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
MrCon
Profile Blog Joined August 2010
France29748 Posts
January 29 2012 01:55 GMT
#9
Amazing post Thanks a lot. Didn't knew ESL gave the same amount of prize money as MLG, sick.
Lonyo
Profile Blog Joined December 2009
United Kingdom3884 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-01-29 02:02:14
January 29 2012 01:59 GMT
#10
What period is the moving average line in the monthly prize money graph based on?

Also nice work. I had calculated a rough low end estimate of prize money a bit ago and came out with $3m+, nice to have a more comprehensive total rather than the crap in the advertising thread by some site talking about top e-Sports by prize money.
HOLY CHECK!
DarkPlasmaBall
Profile Blog Joined March 2010
United States45006 Posts
January 29 2012 02:02 GMT
#11
On January 29 2012 10:55 MrCon wrote:
Amazing post Thanks a lot. Didn't knew ESL gave the same amount of prize money as MLG, sick.


$242,000 to $172,000? Hardly the same...
"There is nothing more satisfying than looking at a crowd of people and helping them get what I love." ~Day[9] Daily #100
LunaSaint
Profile Blog Joined April 2011
United Kingdom620 Posts
January 29 2012 02:04 GMT
#12
I feel that there really needs to be more small events and playhem/go4sc2 style dailies. They're a really nice way of granting smaller players some reasonably serious BoX experience. ...granted they get past the horrible Bo1 segments.

That, and they can provide some good content during quiet areas of the season. Did anyone see atnCloud vs FXOLucky?
KicKDoG
Profile Joined December 2003
Sweden765 Posts
January 29 2012 02:06 GMT
#13
Is this really accurate? if so. Nice job
http://www.twitter.com/KicKDoG_LoL baylife plox?
Bagration
Profile Blog Joined October 2011
United States18282 Posts
January 29 2012 02:06 GMT
#14
This is awesome. Thanks for doing this, and making it so visually easy to understand.

This would be a great way to show people new to competitive SC2 how Sc2 is growing as a competitive Esport.
Team Slayers, Axiom-Acer and Vile forever
Thrie
Profile Joined May 2011
United States24 Posts
January 29 2012 02:12 GMT
#15
On January 29 2012 10:59 Lonyo wrote:
What period is the moving average line in the monthly prize money graph based on?



That is a second order polynomial over all of the monthly data.

I struggled a bit with how to show that, but I feel that it fits the best given the seasonal nature of many of the premier events. I also didn't want a the December lull in a few of the big events to misrepresent the overall trend (this is especially considering that I used the start date, not the end date or when most of the games were played for logging tournament dates).
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
MrCon
Profile Blog Joined August 2010
France29748 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-01-29 03:35:20
January 29 2012 03:34 GMT
#16
On January 29 2012 11:02 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
Show nested quote +
On January 29 2012 10:55 MrCon wrote:
Amazing post Thanks a lot. Didn't knew ESL gave the same amount of prize money as MLG, sick.


$242,000 to $172,000? Hardly the same...

Yeah the font is too small on my monitor and I read 272.000$.
And I also read ESV and not ESL, that's why I thought it was sick.
Perseverance
Profile Joined February 2010
Japan2800 Posts
January 29 2012 03:45 GMT
#17
This is awesome, thanks for putting in the hard work to gather all this data into some pretty informative charts. It kinda makes me excited to see what the prize pools will look like a year from now.
<3 Moonbattles
dAPhREAk
Profile Blog Joined July 2010
Nauru12397 Posts
January 29 2012 03:49 GMT
#18
jesus christ! that is a lot of money. awesome to look at; thanks for putting together.
Xeris
Profile Blog Joined July 2005
Iran17695 Posts
January 29 2012 03:52 GMT
#19
You missed NASL Season 1 in July O_O ... also NASL has awarded >$200,000 in prizes , not sure why it's not listed there pretty much anywhere ...
twitter.com/xerislight -- follow me~~
Torte de Lini
Profile Blog Joined September 2010
Germany38463 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-01-29 03:59:37
January 29 2012 03:59 GMT
#20

Second is that there are six organizations that are really providing a lot of the financial incentive for players. It is no coincidence in my view that GOM is awarding the most money and that most of the best players either live in Korea or try to go there to train.

The last bit of info that stuck in my mind was that small events account for almost 25% of all winnings. It takes a whole lot of dailies to award the same amount of money as even one season of the GSL.


2. Also demands the most amount of cost/expenses, no? If not, the competition is higher and so the work or effort is a lot harder/demands more from the person.

3. Skill ceiling is lower and most of the tournaments can be done in the entirety of the day.

The big winners are the smallest slices because they offer the most with the least amount of time (3-4 days of competition). The demand of skill or experience however is up for debate.
https://twitter.com/#!/TorteDeLini (@TorteDeLini)
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